Light Speed Idea #5 – Remove Topic Silos

Math, history, geography, team building, sales, political science and dozens more are popularly taught topics or subjects. If you asked the question, why is education divided into these topics, the answer is probably… it’s seems logical, it’s one way to divided up everything or it allows teachers to specialize or I don’t really know.

These are silos of knowledge and skill. In the academic world, it makes sense to separate them because it’s easier to teach. However, in the real world things aren’t separated like this. What’s missing is all the connections and links between topics which makes them easier to actually use.

A faster way to learn is to forget about topics and start to think about outcomes or what you want to be able to do. Then work backwards across topics and subject areas to come up with a better curriculum. For example, if you want to learn how to manage your personal finances so you can have the type of lifestyle you want, you need to apply a lot of different skills to achieve this outcome. It includes math, planning, budgeting, maybe a little history and more. You learn quickly because you have a stake in the outcome and you don’t have to figure out how to put together all the pieces and parts.

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This blog is focused on anything related to learning faster. From time to time, I'll be posting about my book Learning Paths: Increase profits by reducing the time it takes to get up-to-speed (Pfeiffer 2004).
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